


Spidey-Time Sadness

by twoseas



Category: Deadpool (Movieverse), Deadpool - All Media Types, Spider-Man - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Feelings, Getting Together, Insecure Wade Wilson, Light Angst, M/M, Pre-Relationship, Star Wars references as a love language, Vanessa is Death, or at least getting there
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-22
Updated: 2020-07-22
Packaged: 2021-03-04 23:08:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,934
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25434403
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twoseas/pseuds/twoseas
Summary: Peter puts his foot in his mouth and is immediately shown the error of his ways while Vanessa rises from the fridge and Wade has Feelings about people and things and himself. He even expresses some of them.Featuring occultism as a dubious alternative for book club, some loves of Wade’s life (and deaths), and a confession or two.
Relationships: Death (Marvel)/Wade Wilson, Peter Parker/Wade Wilson, Vanessa Carlysle/Wade Wilson
Comments: 12
Kudos: 76





	Spidey-Time Sadness

**Author's Note:**

> This fic started from the Lana Del Rey joke featured within and just kind of developed feelings along the way. And if that ain’t the way of things. 
> 
> I’m personally partial to Peter B. Parker and Andrew Garfield’s Peter when it comes to shipping him with Wade, but Tom Holland’s promotional tour with Jake Gyllenhaal sort of won me over onto an aged up version of Tom Holland’s Peter too. So I encourage a pick-your-own-Peter reading for this. Though there’s definitely a nugget for the MCU fans like myself at the end. 
> 
> Please, enjoy!

“And it’s not all about sex. Sometimes I just want to take those cold, fleshless fingers between my own, you know?” Wade told Peter dreamily, the white lenses in his mask distant in a wistful way. 

“Oh my god, Wade. Shut up,” Peter hissed, senses strained to their breaking point as they two of the snuck around the warehouse.

“Jealous?”

Peter refused to hear the hopeful tone in Wade’s teasing. Refused. “No, Wade, what I am is super worried that your big mouth is going to get us caught before we can get in and stop these occultists.”

“Alright, Hellblazer,” Wade grumbled sarcastically. “I get your point. But don’t think I didn’t notice that delightfully petulant tone. You take it every time I mention my sweet lady, did you know?”

Face heating beneath his mask, Peter wall crawled up to one of the dust streaked windows. “I do not,” he murmured, well, petulantly. 

“Do tooooo.”

“Do not.”

“Do tooooo.”

“ _Do_ _not_.”

“Dooooo tooooo.”

“No, I don’t,” Peter snapped in a whisper. “If it seems like I do, then that’s just you misinterpreting my annoyance at you always bringing up your fake relationship with your fake anthropomorphic version of death.”

Wade went deadly still. If Peter’s spidey sense hadn’t entirely refused on tingling when Wade was near, Peter would’ve been worried. Nothing good came of Wade going quiet or unmoving. 

Peter gulped. 

“You think I made her up?” Wade asked, voice soft and questioning.

“Or…” Peter tried to cover, “You know, imagined her. I mean, you. And Death. In a relationship. You. It’s all very, um, not…real seeming.”

“Right.” Shoulders stiff, Wade looked out over the filthy docks. “Right.”

“Wade, I…”

Peter couldn’t tell what upset Wade more - Peter had accidentally blurted a subtext laden accusation at him, after all. But it seemed pretty safe to assume he was mad about several things. All the things.

If Peter wasn’t stuck to a wall he’d facepalm. 

“Of course,” Wade murmured. “Crazy Wade with his stupid imagination and his fake not-technically-alive girlfriend and his dumb feelings. Who would ever be in a relationship with a person like that.”

“That’s not what I-”

“We’ve got movement, Spider-Man.”

Peter winced at the full use of his superhero name even more than at the suddenly businesslike tone in Wade’s voice. 

His disturbingly expressive mask had even gone flat and unrelentingly blank. No tells. 

Wade slinked past, silent as a ghost despite the large combat boots on his feet. And then he was grabbing someone, an arm clamping around the hooded figure’s neck with nothing more than a stifled whimper from beneath the crushed velvet hood. 

“Hi!” Wade said brightly, voice dripping in saccharine venom. “Whatchu doin’?

“Wade, don’t knock him out,” Peter cautioned, lightly leaping off the wall. 

“ _ Don’t knock him out _ ,” Wade mocked in a tiny voice. “Ask your questions, Spider-Man, I don’t have all day to snuggle this little velvet nugget of unholy cult activity.”

Wade released the man who immediately started to whisper in a panicked, breathy voice. “Oh my god, oh my god, thank god you’re here, Spider-Man. I had no idea this was real. I had no idea. I didn’t think it’d work. I-I thought it was for like the aesthetic! A group activity. I’m bad at doing the reading for book clubs and this seemed like a way to get out the house! They did it though, they did it, and they’re going to do even more. I don’t-I-I don’t-”

“Don’t need the life story, amigo,” Wade told the occultist with a shake that rattled his teeth in his terrified skull. 

The man shut up with another whimper.

“How many and what did they do?” Peter asked in his best Spider-Man voice. 

“Twelve people. Eleven without me,” the man corrected nervously. “They summoned something. Something powerful. They’re harnessing its-its powers. They want dominion over the world.”

“Booooooooring,” Wade yawned. “Get a new schtick, occultists.”

“Get out of here,” Peter ordered the man, knowing there were bigger fish to fry. 

“Thank you, thank you, thank you…”

The man’s gratitude faded from their ears as he scurried away. 

“Well, he seemed nice,” Wade commented with a happy sigh. “Eleven little Lovecraftian nerds? How hard can that be?”

Stretching out his arms with a wiggle, Wade mumbled to himself, “Maximum effort.”

And then he was off and firing. 

“Wait!” Peter’s protest fell on deaf ears and the sounds of Wade’s guns rang out sharp and piercing while the wails of those assaulted with rubber bullets resounded around the abandoned warehouse in a macabre cacophony of echoes. 

“Why,” Peter sighed.

Slouching into the space as his spidey sense detected nothing at all, Peter stared at the tableau Wade created. 

Robe wearing occultists were spilled across the dusty, grimy floor. Their robes were piles of heavy fabric around their bodies. The more conscious ones groaned and griped, struggling to stand. Wade stood with his guns out, hip cocked and a satisfied, mean smirk lifting his mask. In the center of the warehouse was a mass of white smoke and curling tendrils of something so dark Peter was reminded of Vantablack. The mass was contained by beams of unnatural light, neon pinks and greens and yellows flashing in strength and intensity while the mass seemed to swell and contract angrily. 

Peter shoved his shock aside to web up the occultists, the unconscious or otherwise debilitated members hardly protesting. 

“What do we have here?” Wade questioned with a mischievous quirk to his brow. Then before Peter could do more than look at the direction of his gaze, Wade took aim and shot a crystal, knocking it away from the circle Peter could now see painted in white across the floor. 

The heaving mass of supernatural energy stopped at once, the void black darkness concentrating in the middle. 

Peter blinked. 

Wade’s arms fell to his sides. “Baby?”

A purring voice spoke, teasing and seductive. “Kiss me like you miss me, Red.”

“Well, come here.” Wade holstered his guns and ran towards the diminishing darkness, arms held out to catch someone. 

And a someone was there to be caught, black robed and holding an actual, honest-to-goodness scythe. 

“Holy shit!” Peter yelped, backing up as the black robed figure jumped into Wade’s arms, wrapping bony (literally made of bone) legs around his waist. His mask was ripped off by the figure’s free hand (all bare, bleached white bone). And then a skull face (an actual literal skull face) was coming down to kiss Wade in the strangest kiss Peter had ever seen (Peter didn’t understand how something could kiss without lips, let alone kiss with this much passion and, to be quite honest, sensuality). 

Peter gawked at the embracing couple under the safety of his mask. 

And Wade beamed, happy as Peter had ever seen him. Happier, even. Around Peter Wade always looked self-conscious of his appearance when his mask was removed, burned, dissolved by acid, or otherwise out of commission. His eyes would dart in a manic sort of awareness that undercut whatever flippant joke he made or he’d shrink within his baggy clothes, a hoodie or a hideously patterned hat tilted at an angle chosen to best obscure his face. But he wasn’t like that now. He was ecstatic, grinning from ear to ear, eyes gentle and intense at the same time, scarred face handsome in his adoration. 

Wade  _ loved _ this person. Loved them in a soft way that Peter had never associated with Wade. He looked comfortable and joyous and open and so unlike Peter’s Wade that a heavy weight settled in Peter’s stomach. 

“Were they trying to harness your unfathomable power for world domination?” Wade asked playfully, nuzzling the side of the figure’s skull until their hood fell off. 

“Yes, and it was so boring!” The figure said with an exaggerated sigh. “Very Palpatine plot line in Rise of Skywalker.”

“Terrible and derivative and nonsensical and unearned?”

“Exactly.”

“Also, when the fuck did you see Rise of Skywalker?”

“Baby, I died and became the physical manifestation of death,” the figure said flatly. “I didn’t stop existing. Of course I saw Rise of Skywalker.”

“The Mandalorian?”

“Baby Yoda!” The figure squealed, squeezing Wade’s face. “So cute and ugly.”

“Remind you of someone?” Wade asked loftily, brow line vaulted upward.

“Oh, shut up,” the figure giggled. 

“I can bring you in warm or I can bring you in cold,” Wade rumbled in his deepest voice. Which was deep. Peter swallowed dryly.

“I have spoken.”

“This is the way.”

“I bet Cara Dune could hold you up while she pegged you, she has the upper body strength for it.”

“I missed you,” Wade said, the words vulnerable and earnest and sounding ripped from his very soul. “And she totally could.”

“I missed you too.” The figure stroked Wade’s face tenderly. The figure’s scythe holding arm lay draped over his shoulder, the gleaming blade bouncing lazily against his back. “But I’m never very far. Especially since you keep pulling some real dumb shit, Wade.”

The figure punctuated the statement with a sharp pinch to Wade’s cheek.

“What can I say, Cable’s most of my impulse control.”

“That’s such a lie,” the figure said immediately. “If that grouchy dilf is anything to you, it’s spank bank material.”

“Domino?”

“No.”

“Colossus.”

“Now you’re definitely thinking spank bank material.”

“Dopinder.”

“Absolutely not.”

“Spider-Man?” Wade hooked his thumb towards where Peter stood in awkward, dumbfounded attention. 

The figure looked Peter’s way, empty eye sockets full of intelligence and awareness. “Oh, hello!”

“H-hi,” Peter waved. 

The figure jumped down lightly, their robe’s hem falling to the floor like liquid shadow. They remained at Wade’s side, looping their free arm around his waist while the other casually held the scythe like a flag. “So you’re the famous Spider-Man?”

“Nice…to meet you?” Peter tried. 

“I’m Vanessa. Wade told me all about you.” The figure looked Peter up and down slowly, setting off a hot flash of self-consciousness. “In great detail.”

“Even better without the mask,” Wade stage whispered. “But enough of sexy spiders! We’ve got to blow this popsicle stand.”

Sirens wailed distantly, but undoubtedly getting closer. 

Wade strutted his way out of the warehouse, arm thrown over Vanessa’s shoulders. 

Peter followed, discombobulated and upset. 

They found their way to their usual post mission rooftop, Vanessa keeping up easily. They even stopped to pick up a pizza to go. Wade chattered on and on, practically ignoring Peter. They talked about movies, TV, friends Peter didn’t know. Vanessa would laugh and sigh and snark, keeping up with Wade in a way that Peter had never seen. And Wade- Wade had lost all his edges. Even dressed in his Deadpool suit, strapped with weapons, and existing as a solid six feet of muscle, Wade seemed…fuzzy. Gone were the self-deprecating comments, the sharp jibes, the seemingly careless, but absolutely calculated testing of people’s limits. 

The tight, heavy feeling in Peter’s stomach only got worse. He was also overcome with an intense desire to be anywhere else, like he was intruding. But then hey settled on the ledge, passing the pizza box back and forth, and Peter figured he could stay for some pizza. Vanessa didn’t take any. 

“So,” Vanessa asked, voice pleasant. “Are we going to address the elephant in the room?”

“I haven’t gained THAT much weight,” Wade declared, affronted. “And I, for one, am a big proponent of the dad bod. Rawr.”

“I mean the me being Death thing,” Vanessa corrected. A skull couldn’t roll its eyes, but Vanessa managed to exude that kind of energy. 

“What’s to address?” Wade waved his slice dismissively. “You got fridged by lazy writing and my own perpetual failure, developed some prophetic powers to aid me during my brief forays into the afterlife, and turned into Death after fucking Elvis. Seems straightforward to me.”

Clearing his throat, Peter raised his hand, “I, uh, have some questions.”

“See?” Vanessa gestured to Peter and nodded sharply. 

“Whatever. Spidey doesn’t count. He didn’t even believe me when I told him about you,” Wade mumbled mutinously. 

Gut flipping, Peter tried to think of a defense, but Vanessa jumped in first. 

“Give him a break, Wade,” she chastised. “It is pretty unbelievable.”

“Oh, so Lana Del Rey can romanticize death and it’s ‘artistic’ and ‘hauntingly beautiful’ but as soon as I do it, it’s ‘unbelievable’ and ‘crazy’ and ‘Wade, you have a metal pipe sticking out of your head!’”

“I’m sorry, Wade,” Peter whispered earnestly, shame thick in his voice. “About what I said. I was unfair and wrong. I know that I give you a hard time. I don’t always assume the best about you. And I sometimes ignore what you say or dismiss it as something crazy or weird you just do. That’s on me. What I said…I know I implied that you couldn’t have a relationship and that you were making one up. I’m sorry, Wade, and not just because I ended up being wrong. But because I hurt your feelings. Especially because of that.”

Wade went completely still again. 

Swallowing around the lump in his throat, Peter waited on Wade’s response.

“Aww,” Vanessa cooed. “He’s so genuine. I get why you like him.”

Wade snapped his head towards Peter. “In a totally platonic and manly bro kind of way!”

“Sure, baby.” Vanessa patted Wade’s shoulder. Then she turned her void filled eye sockets Peter’s way. “For what it’s worth, I approve.”

“Uh, um, I-“

“So flustered,” Vanessa chuckled under her breath. “That’s adorable. And I would love to get to know you better, Peter, I really would. But I’m actually all out of time.”

“What?”

“What?!?!”

“Yeah,” she sighed. “The summoning was weak shit. It was supposed to bind me to the mortal plane so they could use me for their dark deeds and blah blah blah. But it’s temporary. I’ve been slowly detaching from the realm since you set me loose.”

“But it’s only been like an hour,” Wade whined, despondent. 

“I know, but that’s just the way it is,” Vanessa told him sadly. 

“I guess I gotta wait for the next traumatic brain injury,” Wade grumbled. 

Vanessa made a tsking noise. “I would really rather you didn’t make such a habit of those.”

Peter agreed wholeheartedly.

“It doesn’t stick,” Wade pointed out. 

“That doesn’t mean you don’t feel it,” Vanessa snapped. Her bony fingers snatched Wade’s maskless face by the chin. “I love you, Wade. I want you to take better care of yourself.”

Peter thought Wade wasn’t going to respond, a mulish set to his trapped jaw, but in the end he nodded and sighed. “For you.”

“One day, I really hope you do it for you,” Vanessa murmured, low and melancholy. 

Yeah, Peter agreed with that one too. 

Wade pulled Vanessa into a crushing embrace.

His voice was rough and strangled, tears forming in his eyes. “Love you.”

“Love you too.” Vanessa looked over at Peter, her arms still wrapped around Wade. “It was nice to meet you, Peter. I’m glad he has someone like you. And just fyi, he’s great in the sack.”

Peter sputtered out incoherently while Wade’s shoulders shook with breathless laughter. 

“What are you doing?” Wade asked on an inhale, laughter making him nearly unintelligible. 

“Playing wingman for my man,” Vanessa told him unrepentantly. 

“God, you’re the best.” Wade kissed her, just as passionate as the first time. 

“Don’t forget it,” Vanessa told him, playfully stern. “Bye, baby.”

“Bye, Ness.”

The night seemed to absorb her, her physical form leeching into the shadows. 

It was painfully quiet. 

“I never told her my name,” Peter realized. “Did you?”

“And break the superhero code? Absolutely not.”

“Then how-“

“She got supercharged by cosmic jumper cables,” Wade told him easily. His unfocused eyes seemed to look through the space where Vanessa once sat. “She probably knows way more than any of us.”

They sat in silence, Peter unsure of where to go from there. 

“Well, baby boy, I gotta hit the hay.” Wade jumped up with a stretch. “Metaphorically, not literally. It’s not a Wednesday. Get home safe.”

Without waiting for a response, Wade jumped off the roof and out of sight. 

“Goodnight, Wade,” Peter sighed. 

He sat there a moment more, finishing off the pizza Wade left behind and staring into the distance. 

There was a lot to think about.

Two weeks later and Wade wasn’t acting any different. Peter expected something. Anything. A sign that the night wasn’t all a figment of Peter’s whacked out imagination. But Wade never brought it up. He seemed to have forgiven Peter, treating him with the same combination of flirtation, nicknames, and pop culture references he had before. 

It was weird and it was making Peter behave weirdly. 

“Ok, what’s the sitch?” Wade asked on their rooftop, eyes narrowed in assessing curiosity. 

“What?” Peter squawked. “What sitch? There is no sitch here.”

“You’re being weird as fuck, baby boy,” Wade said reasonably. And he was right which was just the worst. “You can play innocent all you like, but I see right through the ingenue act. Something’s up.”

“Why do you want to know?” Peter mumbled, arms crossed and gaze averted. 

Wade’s shoulders went back and he groaned dramatically. “Uh, because I care, duh.”

Heart racing, Peter tried to hide how affected he was. “That’s nice.”

“So, I repeat my inquiry, what’s the deal?”

“You’re being normal,” Peter blurted. 

“Petey-pete,” Wade sighed, shoulders sagging. “Isn’t that a good thing?”

“No, yes, uh, I mean…” Peter floundered with his words, tongue twisting over the feeling he couldn’t quite enunciate. “I thought you’d be…different. After seeing Vanessa.”

“Oh.” Wade was back to being silent and still and Peter felt sweat break out over the back of his neck, under his arms, and on his palms.

Which was honestly so disgusting. Why was he so gross?

“I’m ok, Peter,” Wade finally told him, earnest and serious in a way Peter rarely got out of Wade. 

“Are you sure?” There was a slightly desperate thread to Peter’s voice and he cleared his throat.

“Yeah,” Wade chuckled sadly. “I am. I mean…don’t get me wrong. I miss her. More than I’ve missed my limbs some days. But Vanessa died a couple of years ago and I’ve been seeing her like she is now, all magical and mystical, since then. I’ve come to terms with it.”

“Isn’t that hard?”

Peter winced when he realized how wide he left that question open for a dumb joke. 

Surprisingly, or maybe not so surprisingly, Wade didn’t take it. 

“Yes and no,” Wade hummed, like he really was thinking over how he answered Peter. “It’s tough to explain, Spidey. I don’t…I don’t know.”

“Yeah, that makes sense,” Peter supposed. He thought about the way Vanessa treated Wade, talked to him. “She was really great. What I saw of her at least.”

“Should’ve seen her with skin,” Wade joked. “You would’ve creamed your spandex, baby boy.”

“Ew, Wade,” Peter sighed, happy to be on more familiar ground. 

“She is great,” Wade told him more genuinely, though his voice was light and bouncy again. “I met her before all of this.”

Wade waved at his entire body, lingering around his semi visible face. “She knew me before I was extra crazy. Just regular crazy. And let me tell you something, Petey, hot guy privilege is so real. I was regular crazy, but also hot, and I got away with  _ everything _ .”

The half of Wade’s face Peter could see was turned up in a smile. “But she made sure I knew my place. She roasted the shit out of me, she crushed a guy's plums. She was just…effervescent.”

“That’s not what that means.”

“Shhhh,” Wade hushed, bringing a finger to Peter’s still masked face. “She was smart and sharp and funny. And she laughed at my jokes and was willing to see me though some bad shit. She even took me back after I became…this.”

“Wade, I-“

“I think that’s something I miss now that she’s, you know, Death with a capital D,” Wade told him, low and secretive. “Past just missing her, I mean. How she loved me. The way she did it.”

The space between them went quiet, filled by the sounds of the city. 

“I wish I could have that again,” Wade confessed, a tremble to his rough voice. 

“Why can’t you?” Peter asked, voice barely audible like he was afraid of puncturing the moment. Maybe because he was. 

The ragged, scoffing laugh Wade let out was devoid of all humor. “Come on, Spidey.”

“I’m serious,” Peter told him, voice stronger. “I mean it.”

“Sharp turn around from the guy who didn’t think I was capable of a real relationship not two weeks ago,” Wade told him coldly. He stood up and dragged his mask back over the entirety of his face. 

Heart rabbiting in his chest, Peter shot to his feet and reached out, grabbing Wade’s wrist just in time to stop him from leaving. “Wade, wait!”

“This is unlawful detainment,” Wade suggested, but he didn’t move. 

“I’m sorry,” Peter told him, pushing as much emotion as he could to the surface, begging with his voice and mannerisms to be seen and understood. 

“Yeah, I know.” Wade sighed and shook his head. “We’re good.”

“No, we’re not.” Peter tugged at Wade’s arm and tried to get him to sit back down. Wade did, but in slow, stilted movements that painted a perfect picture of his reluctance. 

When Wade was back on the ledge, Peter sucked in a deep breath and took his mask off with his free hand, his other hand occupied with clinging to Wade’s wrist. 

“Wade, I’m…I think you can have that again.”

Halting Wade’s protest with a shake of his head, Peter pursed his lips and struggled with articulating it all. “Everything she loved about you, it’s all still there. You’ve done things that I don’t approve of, you struggle with things I can’t even imagine, but you’re you. You’re not unloveable.”

Wade tried to interrupt, but Peter squeezed his wrist warningly and he could actually hear Wade’s teeth clamp together. 

“You  _ aren’t _ ,” Peter stressed. “So please stop thinking you are.”

Peter thought Wade was going to debate him on it, but Wade just regarded him with a tilted head, face of his mask unreadable. 

“Ok, baby boy. For you.”

“I think we’d both want you to do it for you,” Peter told him gently, but pointedly. Wade seemed to get just who the ‘we’ was that Peter meant, the taller man’s breath hitching. “But that’s good enough for now.”

They sat like that, no more talking for once, not even Wade’s chatter interrupting the odd, but not uncomfortable peace between them. 

Wade eventually let out a deep exhale and took his mask off, fully baring his face and the twisting scar tissue that covered it. His dark eyes were all liquid emotion in the ambient orange light of the city. “Thanks, Peter.”

“You’re welcome,” Peter mumbled. Then, debating with himself, Peter realized that honesty really was sometimes the best policy. Clearing his throat, Peter braced himself for the blowback of what he was going to say. He was basically dropping a grenade right in the middle of their friendship. He could only hope for the best. 

“I was jealous, by the way,” Peter finally managed to get out, voice airy and wheezy and not remotely as calm as he’d hoped to be. 

Wade’s neck actually cracked as he faced Peter, matching the break in his voice, “What the  _ fuck _ ?!” 

  
  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Peter: Are you going to say anything else?!  
> Wade: Yeah, yeah, just give me a minute.  
> Peter: You’ve been sitting there staring at me for ten minutes.  
> Wade: Cut me some slack, I just reached the lovers part of our enemies to friends to lovers dynamic and I DON’T KNOW WHAT TO DO


End file.
